Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Being jobless is actually good?

I read quite an interesting article with the catchy title of 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job. It pretty much reminds me on why I think life time employment might not seems like a good plan.

Basically, you only get paid when you work, and you probably get paid based on the numbers of hour you worked (silly, I know, as if we are a factory). It is actually possible to build a system for us which continues to generate income even when we are not working. I guess this is what financial independence, passive income and business system all about, continue to make money even when you are sleeping.

Once I read, a businessman is a Jack of all Trade, Master of none. When you become a specialist, you kinda limit your experience to a specific field, just focusing on one thing and disregard the rest. You live in your small little world, happily ever after. Perhaps being employed is a comfort, where we just need to do one thing and be quite good at it, and the rest is handled by others.

The funny thing is, the author compared life long domestication to life long employment, which could be true in a certain sense. We would have a master, and we follow orders.

What is the most secured job in this world? Definitely not a programmer or a backroom operator, because they can be replaced easily (general naïve assumption, with a cost of course). Someone once told me it is Sales, because it moves business and once you can sell, every business would need you. But every employee could be fired, and even Steve Jobs got fired before, haha! Perhaps being self employed is not less risky than employment.

One of the bad things about employment is having either an evil or stupid boss, think Dilbert’s Pointy Hair Boss. You can’t ignore them, and you have to listen to them even though you know they are not really good. It reminds me of Grade A students work under Grade B Students, and Grade C students own the business.

Loss of freedom is definitely true; you signed away 9-5 everyday, at least 5 days a week, so these 40 hours block per week does not belong to you. For some unlucky folks out there, perhaps another 10-20 hours are sucked out from them for free. I do hope you like your job very much, or at least got paid a lot, or at least being happy. If you enjoyed none of these, doesn't it makes you wonder why you are still here.

Perhaps it is common during employment for us to whine endlessly about the company’s problems. Even if we wanna stop whining and start fixing the problem, we might not have the authority, influence or support to make the change. Kinda felt helpless, and it seems like the best thing to do is MYOB and just remains ignorance, and continues whining, or move on to another whining pot.

So, what is so happy about being jobless? Only and only if you manage to build a system to help you generate income all the time, even when you are having fun or sleeping. How could we actually do that? There is another topic for another day, from another article. Basically this is just awareness, showing the possibility of alternative income model, and the possibility that we might be brainwashed into employment and become a slave minions all these while. Anyway, this might be another lie to brainwash you as well ;)